Lillian Gish, 99; One Of First Stars Of Movies, Had A 75-Year Career

Lillian Gish, whose portrayals of fragile innocence graced the golden age of silent films and eventually extended into an eight-decade screen career, a testament to perpetuity, is dead.

Her longtime personal manager, James Frasher, said yesterday that the internationally recognized star died in her sleep in her stylish apartment on Manhattan's Sutton Place Saturday night. She was 99.

"She often said she wished if at all possible that she be allowed to die in her own bed, and the Lord granted her request," Frasher said.

Her final film was "The Whales of August" in 1987.

A performer raised in the dawn of filmmaking, Gish portrayed forever-menaced heroines in D.W. Griffith's silent movies. A wistful "child-woman" with big eyes and a rosebud mouth, she became one of Hollywood's first stars to become famous in other countries.

Since the 1920s she had lived alone in her apartment. She leaves no known survivors.

Between 1912 and 1987, she appeared in 105 films, from a one-reel movie made for Griffith, "The Unseen Enemy," to "The Whales of August."

One of the last and best known survivors of the early days of film, Gish over the last several years gave scores of lectures, hosted a television series and wrote two books about her experiences between 1912 and 1922, when she made "Birth of a Nation," "Broken Blossoms" "Way Down East," "Orphans of the Storm" and other films for the legendary Griffith.

Gish was, according to many historians, the silent screen's greatest dramatic actress, and starred in more of Griffith's films than any other performer. Her work for him produced some of the silent era's most famous moments: the "closet scene" from "Broken Blossoms," in which she played a 12-year-old reacting in abject terror to a brutal father's pounding on the other side of the door; or the "smile," from the same film, in which, to form the only smile her character was capable of, she pushed up the corners of her mouth with her fingers.

Though she did not at first successfully survive Hollywood's transition to talking films - by her personal choice, she claimed - she later pursued a stage career and held supporting roles in about 12 "talking films," including "Duel in the Sun" (1947), "The Comedians" (1967), "A Wedding" (1978) and a co-starring role opposite Bette Davis in "The Whales of August."

In 1971, Gish received an honorary Oscar "for superlative artistry and distinguished contribution" to the movie industry. In 1984, she was presented the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award.

Gish had what critics referred to as an "ethereal aura" that projected purity, frailty and vulnerability. In contrast to her screen image, however, she was strong-minded, opinionated and independent. "That virginal character hadn't anything to do with me," she once said.